HUD Highlights $4 Billion RAD Milestone

Congress authorized the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) to create a new tool for public housing agencies to address the backlog of capital repairs in the nation’s public housing stock and to stem the loss of affordable units. Recently, just four years after HUD made its first awards under this program, HUD announced that the program has crossed over 60,000 units and raised a total of $4 billion to rehabilitate and in some cases replace affordable properties from the ground up with new construction.

According to HUD, RAD is leveraging $19 in capital for every $1 of public housing funds, significantly expanding the ability of local PHAs to improve their public housing properties. Without RAD, it would take 46 years for these PHAs to accomplish the same level of repairs and renewal.

Under RAD, PHAs convert some or all of their developments to a project-based Section 8 platform. The new, long-term Section 8 contracts that these properties transition to guarantee that the units remain permanently affordable to low-income households. HUD has made awards to PHAs across the country for all the 185,000 units currently authorized to participate in RAD and estimates an additional $6 billion in new, largely privately funded construction investments will be made in the public housing units currently authorized to participate in RAD. The recently enacted FY17 spending bill raises the RAD cap to 225,000 from 185,000 units.